"After Hell" & The Paradise of Audio Drama

Having just launched the horror site, "All The Hells", how I could I not listen to an audio drama called "After Hell"?

"After Hell" a supernatural drama, a mix of police procedural and "28 Days Later"-style Armageddon story. It's enthusiastically presented and - the key to any good audio drama - uses an intelligent sound design to create spaces, describe scenes, illustrate scenes in detail.

I was sent one of the new CD copies from SciFind Ltd., UK based aggregator of all things scientifically fictional. I was sold on the concept, sight unseen - or sound unheard.

I love audio drama - as anyone who has heard my delightfully self-indulgent (yes, delightfully!) "Wretched Goo Of The Imagination" podcasts will tell you. One of my first forays into media production was the recording of a thrilling audio space adventure with my older brother. It was entitled "Face To Face With The Planet Scanodon!" and recorded in the living room of our Ohio apartment on glorious reel-to-reel tape. I wonder if

my parents still have that tape in storage somewhere.

And I have not grown up - have not "changed my principles", let's say - that sounds better - one iota since then. Here is the planet Scanodon at The Cyclopedia Of Worlds:

And, heck, here's a movie of the planet Scanodon at The Cyclopedia Of World's video channel, that you can watch till your eyes cross:

The quality of writing and production design may have improved since I was seven years old, but the subject matter...remarkably the same.

Writer-director Joe Medina at Ollin Productions has put together something he should be proud of with "After Hell". I think Orson Welles would agree with me, if he were animated and rotting next to me in some kind of horrific horror story way, that audio drama - radio drama, we used to call it - is it's own, self-contained media form. Audio drama, like music, engages the mind and imagination directly - and can - in partnership with our brains - describe atmospheres, textures, spaces, and all manner of impossible absurdities (see again, The Wretched Goo Of The Imagination) with ease. I love it. And will do more of it myself some day, when I finish these several dozen other projects.

Well done, to Ollin Productions and the entire "After Hell" crew. Keep up the good work. We want more. We need more.

Happy New Year from The Cyclopedia Of Worlds

Sapin

The Cyclopedia Of Worlds - worlds - Sapin

Wurrmarr Landscape

Visit other planets at The Cyclopedia Of Worlds

Cyclopedia Of Worlds - Mersia Sia & Moon

Fans & students of "The Cyclopedia of Worlds" will notice that we've taken the "beta" mark off the home page.

Of course, the sci-fi site - presented in the format of a reference tome written 500 years from now - is nothing like finished. Nor will it ever be finished - unless we run out of stars, and run out of planets around those stars, and run out of people to live, love, work, and die on those planets. But the design of the Cyclopedia is sufficiently stable so that we can now go to adding entries and images and all manner of thrilling sci-fi content without worrying about how the layout and technology are going to behave.

We, of course, welcome comments at "The Cyclopedia". And we urge you to browse frequently since it is updated continuously, with new entries and images added all the time.

The above panoramic image is of the planet Mersia Sia and its largest moon. Mersia Sia was home to the headquarters of the merciless Expansion Period warlord, Michael Portland - aka Michael Bloody Wednesday. The Pantheon of Michael Bloody Wednesday, where the warlord is buried, is one of the most frequently visited landmarks in the Coral Agency.

"The Cyclopedia of Worlds: A History Of The Future"

Cyclopedia Of Worlds SLIDE

the cyclopedia of worlds

Wanitani & Moons

Planet Conus Landscape

Scanodon Polar Swamp

Each week, we try to present an image from the sci-fi site, Cyclopedia Of Worlds. This week, a view of the stinking polar swampland of the planet Scanodon:

Aphrophine

The Cyclopedia Of Worlds

Drakonhead

The DRAKONHEAD Class "venture ships" were built by Livingstone High Enterprise for Your Agency, for use as a multipurpose very-long-range transport.

The Drakonhead was used first for outer-solar, then near-interstellar exploration and commerce. It was the first vessel to employ a bismuth reactor-powered gravity wave drive. The bismuth drive, in effect, increased the vessel's rate of travel by a factor of 10. Drawbacks were that it was very hot, unstable, and even with dense shielding, was a radiation hazard to cargo and crew. Bismuth drives were blamed for dozens of deaths, some through radiation poisoning, more commonly through sudden, catastrophic detonation.

Nevertheless the Drakonheads were used throughout the late Expansion Period. When they were replaced by the vastly improved Drakonwing craft, the Drakonhead design was licensed to companies that otherwise would have been unable to afford interstellar travel.

When heavy element drives gravity drives became common at the end of the Expansion Period, the ships - still used for cheap, unlicensed transport - were derogatorially called "Dragging-heads".

The Drakonhead is the archetype for the Expansion Era venture ship. Although used far less frequently than the Drakonwing and other heavy-element reactor vessels, the Drakonhead conjures images of risk and endurance that has come to be associated with the Expansion Era.

Learn more at:
THE CYCLOPEDIA OF WORLDS

Stomu

www.cyclopediaofworlds.com

Conus

March Time Pelago Sunset

Barnard IV

Scanodon

Planet Shuttleworth

T'Canidew Omuch

Lantil Mybea